In general, for this purpose use is made of indirectly fired anchoring equipment and a fastener is introduced into the barrel either by hand, from the front, into the plug guide of the equipment, or automatically using a loader.
In order that, as it is being driven along the barrel of the equipment, after firing and before being introduced into the receiving material, the fastener remains perfectly coaxial with the barrel, does not tip with respect to the axis and therefore remains correctly guided, it has already been proposed for a guide washer or guide block to be slipped onto the shank of the fastener. In fact, two guide washers spaced apart along the shank or one guide block of sufficient axial length to ensure good cohesion between the nail and its guide block have already been proposed.
It will be noted that feeding fasteners with guide washers into the barrel of the equipment can be performed only by hand, or, at a pinch, from a dispenser, whereas fasteners with guide blocks can be offered up in strip form with their blocks back to back in a string, the strip being mounted in a loader with a return spring so that when the loader is mounted on the equipment, it pushes the strip and introduces a guide block into the barrel prior to each firing. A string of guide blocks is described, for example, in patent EP 0 502 667.
It will also be noted that with fasteners in strip form, after each firing, the block of the fastener that is to be driven is separated from the adjacent block by shearing by the flyweight of the equipment and then, at the moment that the fastener is driven into the receiving material, the block acts as a damper and as a washer.